‘Before’ – no we had absolutely nothing to do with that awful yellow mural!

Wow that’s a lot of words beginning with R right there. I am so very VERY excited about this project though so all that alliteration is worth it to share the news!

Revamp, Restyle, Reveal is an interiors challenge which I was asked to take part in by interior designer Lisa Dawson (I mentioned her in my favourite interiors Instagram accounts a few months ago, isn’t it funny how these things always come full circle!?) and blogger extraordinaire Bianca Hall of French for Pineapple.

The concept is simple: 10 bloggers, 9 brands, 1 room, 4 weeks. It’s kind of like Changing Rooms meets 60 Minute Makeover but without Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen, Linda Barker or Peter Andre (didn’t he present 60 Minute Makeover for a hot minute? It’s probably quite shameful that I know that…)

Now because Gareth and I are suckers for punishment, and also because one of the sponsors is one our all-time favourite appliances websites (seriously, we’ve bought every appliance we’ve ever owned from ao.com – their service is quite frankly brilliant) we decided to bite the bullet, dive in head first (and a million other clichés) and do our kitchen. Yes, in a month!

And we have a door that needs bricking up and turning into a window…

And the entire room needs plastering…

AND we’re doing as much of it as we can ourselves…

What could possibly go wrong!?

The kitchen is very small (about 2 x 5 metres). An extension is in our grand ‘one day when we win the lottery’ plans but for now we just need to make the small space work for us. The window you can see in the middle of the shot below is actually a door which the previous owners blocked up with some chipboard, painted shut and stuck a worktop in front of it. I kid you not! Obviously that was one of the first things we knew had to go. We’re a week into the challenge right now and Gareth has actually finished this already (you can see it on my Instagram here!) He taught himself to brick-lay by watching YouTube tutorials by the way. What a bloody trooper.

We also want to re-plaster (although we might leave the back wall, above, as brick) as the walls are pretty disgusting and in really bad shape in a lot of places – like all those little holes in the yellow part of the wall, god knows what happened there!

And no, Gareth’s never plastered before either… We may need to make an emergency call out for a plasterer in a few days’ time if it all goes tits up. I will report back…!

We’re changing the layout to a U shape to maximise the space. On the left hand side we’ll have half size units at the top and bottom so the gangway is slightly wider, the oven will move to the end, the sink will move up on the right hand side slightly and we’ll extend the right hand side worktop a few feet so that a) it actually covers the appliances (!) and b) it gives us more work space.

Style-wise we’re going for gloss white units and either a white granite/ marble worktop (if we can source it in time) or a white laminate which we’ll plan to switch out when we’re not up against a massive time crunch! The floor is going to be covered with a lino. I know it’s not the most trendy way to do it, but honestly, we’ve seen some really nice looking ones and it sure is an inexpensive and easy way to revamp the floor.

We’ll also be painting the back wall bubblegum pink (you know I had to have pink in my kitchen right?) moving the fridge and creating a small little comfortable seating area for us to chill out in in the morning.

Here’s our moodboard of how I’m hoping the room will look afterwards. If it’s even close to as pretty as this I’ll be very happy indeed.

If you’d like to follow along with our progress be sure to check in on my Instagram Stories and follow the #revamprestylereveal hashtag. There are giveaways going on throughout the month on the Revamp, Restyle, Reveal Instagram account too where you can get involved and win some amazing prizes from the sponsors.

Wish us luck because, oh boy, are we gonna need it!